By now, I’ve taken learning German more seriously for half a year. It’s still difficult, especially speaking and writing. I tried the German GCSE exam for reading, and managed to get a grade 9 with 49 points out of 60 (that’s the highest possible grade in GCSE). However, I’m still not confident. I find building sentences problematic if I want to talk about more complex things. Reading is slightly easier, but I won’t know if a sentence is wrong!
Mittlerweile lerne ich seit ein halb Jahr Deutsch. Es ist noch schwierig, besonders sprechen und schreiben. Ich hatte die Deutsch GCSE-Prüfüngen für Lesen probiert. Ich habe im Prüfüngen einen Neun (das ist die höchstmögliche Note) mit 49/60 Punkten erzielt, aber ich habe noch kein Konfidenz. Ich finde Satzbau problematisch, wenn ich komplexe Dinge sagen will. Lesen ist ein bisschen einfacher, aber ich werde nicht wissen ob ein Satz falsch ist.
The paper I tried out specifically was the June 2018 exam for AQA GCSE German. This qualification is assessed over four papers, which attempt to test the four common language skills – Paper 1 tests listening, Paper 2 speaking, Paper 3 reading and Paper 4 writing. I found it interesting to see how an attempt is made to segment performance by limiting the extent to which the skills not being assessed are required. For example, in Papers 1 and 3 many questions ask for answers in English, and for the sections where answers are required in German full sentences generally aren’t needed, and linguistic errors generally aren’t penalised unless they affect clarity.
I tried out Paper 3 first, largely for practical reasons – I will probably do Paper 1 at some point, as the sound files are also available online. I can’t quite administer Paper 2 to myself, and for Paper 4 I’d need someone to evaluate my own writing, as I’m certainly not in a position to do that yet. I attempted the Higher paper, which is aimed at students seeking to get a grade between 4 and 9 (recall that passing grades range from 1 to 9). I wasn’t confident of getting a super high grade as I’ve only studied German on-and-off for around seven months or so; GCSE courses typically run for two years. Nonetheless, I managed to scrape it (the grade boundary for 9 was at 48 of 60, and I scored 49 – note that 48 is good enough, so I had one point of breathing room).
The paper is divided into three sections; the first involves reading texts and responding in English, the second is similar to the first but in German, and the third involves translating a German passage back to English. Generally, within each section difficulty increases, which led to a rather non-monotonic difficulty curve. Q8 at the end of Section A was probably a question aimed at top students, while Q9, the first question of Section B was a crossover with Foundation Tier, so aimed towards the lower end of the Higher Tier range.
I also found the translation task fairly straightforward – I knew all of the words apart from Bauernhof, and based on context (working with animals, starting the day early, hard work) along with guessing from prefixes (Bau– for construction: it turns out Bauer means farmer but I didn’t know that as well, and –hof for yard e.g. from Bahnhof – train station – or Friedhof – cemetery) guessed it correctly as farm. My natural tendency to aim for precision seemed to work very well on this question.
Most of the marks lost came from holes in my German vocabulary. There were questions that asked for specific features of the text to be described in English, and these often effectively reduced to questions about the definitions of specific words. For example, there were questions that effectively asked what Dieb (thief), enspannen (relax), vermeiden (avoid) or lügen (lie, as in telling an untruth), none of which I knew, meant – I was able to figure out from context that that word was the desired answer, but had to guess when translating. Interestingly, if I was asked to write the answer in German (being allowed to lift) I would have scored these marks!
There were also a few marks which were lost because of carelessness. I’m aware that trying to pick out keywords and translating them is often a trap, yet I still ended up making some of these mistakes. For example, on the first question which involved reading people’s descriptions of what they did to help the environment, I accidentally described someone who said Meine Eltern haben immer ihren Müll getrennt, aber … habe ich nichts gemacht as saying they separated their trash. I probably got too excited about knowing what getrennt meant – it’s often used when asking if a bill is to be split in restaurants – and wrote down “separating trash”. The correct answer is of course, nothing – the separation was done by their parents, not them!
I’m not entirely sure this grade 9 is secure, being just two points away from an 8. That said, the 7-8 boundary is at 41, so I’m quite confident of at least an 8. This also means that if I was to take the entire GCSE qualification an overall 9 probably wouldn’t happen, as I’d see reading as the language skill I’m currently most confident in in German. Students have overall grades calculated based on the sum of their marks in each of the four papers – while a candidate doesn’t need to get a 9 in each component, any marks below the 9 boundary in one paper must generally be offset by marks in other papers. I’m not sure what standard is expected, but I won’t be too surprised if I struggle to get a 5 in Schreiben (writing) or Sprechen (speaking).
